Broadband wireless systems are typically designed for per cell capacity maximization with some fairness constraints for individual users. Even when the fairness constraints are taken into account, the basic assumption is that the allocated rate can be fully utilized. However, practical systems have limitations in terms of smallest chunks of bandwidth allocation. For instance, in HSDPA systems, the smallest time unit a given channel (e.g., spreading code, frequency band, etc.) dedicated to a particular user (say Alice) is 2 milliseconds long. Suppose B bits are waiting in Alice's transmission queue and Alice's channel quality is such that this smallest unit can deliver W bits, which is strictly more than B bits. Therefore, the system wastes (W−B) bits by either going into an idle mode for the remainder of the time slot or by sending padded bits. Note that the main problem here is that the system cannot reassign the channel to another user and partially reuse since the scheduling decisions are done on a per slot basis in this example.